Password Recovery for Nexus Switches

• On a Windows PC, change the keyboard layout to en-US
• Connect to the Nexus switch directly via serial console (not over ssh/telnet/Opengear etc.) using TeraTerm or PuTTY

The above two steps are not required any longer. Issueing the break sequence with a german keyboard through an Opengear console session works fine (Strg + AltGr + 9).

• Power on the device
• Wait until kickstart image has booted and the POST messages have appeared.
• Right after the massage Checking all filesystems....r. done. has appeared, issue the break sequence to get to the switch(boot)# prompt.
  • The break sequence is Ctrl + ], i.e. hold the Control-Key and hit the closing square bracket.
  • On a german keyboard (with US keymap activated) the Control-Key is Strg and the closing square bracket ist on the + * ~ - Key.
• Enter the conf t command
• Type admin-password Ad123min
• Type exit
• Type dir bootflash: to view bootflash content
• Boot the system image, for example load bootflash:n5000-uk9.5.1.3.N2.1b.bin
• Enter the switch with username admin and Password Ad123min
• Save configuration: copy running-config startup-config